


Calling Roll

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Justified
Genre: 1980s, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 19:57:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20179876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: Boyd digs coal. BoydCrowderdigs coal, and that's a name no one soon forgets.





	Calling Roll

**Author's Note:**

> I had thoughts about what the other men on the crew must have thought of a Crowder and a Givens digging coal, and this is the ficlet that resulted.

One long line of sumbitches. One slurry pond of a family. That’s the kind of shit Boyd Crowder hears when he signs up at the mine. “What are you doing down this hole, boy? Being up your daddy’s asshole ain’t good enough?”

It takes Boyd months to earn his place, it takes him busting his balls and his back and near about losing his hand to a drill before the other men on his shift stop hissing “Crowder” like it’s a slur. It takes his promotion to powderman before they treat him with anything resembling respect, and Boyd ain’t so naive that he don’t see the fear underneath, the same kind of fear men offer his daddy’s guns.

Raylan signs up right out of high school, and the foreman reads out, “Givens?” like it’s the first word in a long curse.

Boyd steps forward, just one step, his arms wrapped with cord and his hands filled with all the Emulex he’ll carry down into the mine.

“Yeah?” Raylan responds, belligerent, spoiling for a fight because Raylan is always spoiling for a fight, Raylan would fight God Himself if God weren’t too smart to show His face.

The foreman shakes his head, but he’s looking at Boyd, looking at Boyd Crowder’s smile and his hands brimming with dynamite.

“What’d he want?” Raylan wonders, once they’re down the shaft and into a cart, rumbling toward Raylan’s first shift underground.

“Just calling roll,” Boyd tells him, and it’s the truth, because no man calls Raylan “Arlo Givens’s pathetic runt,” no one says a word about Raylan and a baseball bat and broken knees, proof that he ain’t no better than any Givens that’s come before.

The men turn to speak to Raylan, but first they look at Boyd, and Boyd holds up the detonator, Boyd grins and hollers, “Fire in the hole!” and no man on their shift ever has a single unkind word for Raylan.


End file.
